


Request Denied, Request Denied

by ckret2



Category: Invader Zim
Genre: Gen, Irken Politics, like not angst but depressing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-09
Updated: 2018-12-09
Packaged: 2019-09-15 03:05:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,764
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16925331
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ckret2/pseuds/ckret2
Summary: Red and Purple are the most wildly successful Tallest the Irken Empire has had in ages. This, despite the fact that the Empire is starving, dying, and decaying around them.





	Request Denied, Request Denied

**Author's Note:**

> Tumblr's freaking out, time to mirror everything to AO3.
> 
> I discovered that I wrote this eleven years ago and I don’t even remember writing it?? But it only needed like a few paragraphs to have a proper conclusion, so I decided to type it up and wrap up the ending. also u can tell this was written by a 16-year-old who was _not quite exactly sure_ what world leaders do all day but assumed that it probably mainly consisted of a lot of paperwork.

Under the rule of Almighty Tallest Red and Purple, the Irken Empire was the strongest it had ever been. The sheer size of the empire said enough about their success; and despite the fact that resistance, rebellions, and revolts against the Irkens were higher than they had ever been before, in proportion to the number of citizens under their rule, the relative percentage of the population that was fighting against its Empire had actually decreased. Sullen slaves and unconquered races outside the empire could never really understand what it was about these two particular Tallest that made them, bumbling as they were, so successful. But the answer, really, could be summed up with a simple Earthen expression:

Two heads are better than one.

In fact, the Tallest would only benefit from having quite a few more heads. Not, of course, that they'd get them.

The particular room they were standing before now seemed utterly inconspicuous—it was designed that way. There was no need for other Irkens on the Massive to know when they were passing the second most important room in the Empire, surpassed only by the vast, vault-like main chamber of the Primary Snack Warehouse on Irk itself.

The room was labeled "Foreign Visitor Toilets," and since foreigners were never allowed on the Massive, the room was never disturbed. Despite its label, it had a huge, imposing doorframe and a powerful lock; no one seemed to question this, but then the room was on a rarely-used corridor. The official name of the room was Office of the Tallest.

Red called it "a glimpse of hell."

Purple called it "reasonable justification for suicide."

And neither wanted to open the door.

"I opened it last time," Purple said.

"No you didn't, I did," Red said. "Because you said you'd done it the last time before that, too."

"Nuh-uh, I sad that the time BEFORE last time!"

"You're such a liar."

"Am not!"

"Yeah, you are."

Purple made a disgusted noise. His antennae twitched in agitation, the shafts almost vibrating. "Can't we just... get someone else to open it, and then throw 'em out the airlock?"

"No, what if someone else finds them before their head explodes from lack of air? Then they know where our office is. And can steal government secrets or something." Red wiggled his fingers, illustrating the secrets. Though he did like the idea. It was only the risk of groups like the Resisty getting their slimy little alien hands on someone who'd seen inside this room that kept him from agreeing.

Purple put his hands on his hips (which actually had taken him more practice than you'd think to master, balancing his armored guantlets on the hover belt at just the right angle to let his fingers wrap around it), but his eyes were no longer narrowed in annoyance—as they'd been for the past hour, in anticipation of this trial. Instead, they were half lidded, thoughtfully, as he regarded the door. "... What'll you give me to open the door?"

"Um..." Red reached over his shoulder into his Pak, stretching his spindly fingers to feel what he had with him. "I've got... four candy bars, some popcorn, a bag of cheese puffs, some chips..."

"What flavor?" Purple asked.

Red pulled out the bag to check. "Uh... sour fruit?"

"Sour fr— since when do they make chips out of sour fruit?"

"I'unno. That's just the flavor." Red shrugged.

Purple grabbed the bag to inspect it. "Oooh. That's NEW." As a species that survived entirely on snacks, they had to be creative to keep their diet from becoming monotonous. It is a terrible thing to grow tired of eating chips.

"Fine." Purple put the bag in his own Pak and said, "What else you got?"

What, that wasn't enough? Red thought for a moment, and then sighed. He did have something else. "Well... you... DO remember our last trip to Sintillia, don't you?"

Purple's antennae stood straight up. "Yeees?"

Sintillia was the one world that had never been on the list for conquest in either of the Operations: Impending Doom, with good reason.

The inhabitants were small, unthreatening creatures that looked like furry puffballs with hard blue gem-like eyes. Some races valued their eyes as jewelry.

That had nothing to do with the Irkens' reasons for not conquering them. They didn't like jewelry and had no sympathy for puffballs.

The reason Sintillia was protected was because of its farms. Specifically, its vast plantations, which produced a particular sugar crop that tasted sweeter than any the Irkens had ever found before and that, as far as the Irkens could tell, were unable to grow on other planets. And oh, had they TRIED to grow it on other planets. Big surprise, it turned out the Sintillates had been selectively breeding their crops to need their home planet's conditions in order to thrive. The Sintillates were willing to trade with Irk—for a steep price—but said that if they ever got so much as a hint that the Irkens were looking at their planet for conquest, they would raze their own plantations to the ground.

"Yeah... I might have a few pieces of Sintillate fudge left somewhere in my room." Red had been saving them for a special occasion, like the completion of OID-2. Or the unconditional, sudden surrender of the Sintillates, leaving the Irkens with the largest chocolate surplus they'd ever enjoyed.

"Done!" Purple tapped in the access code to the office door, and Red quickly hovered out of the way before it opened.

"Hey," Purple said, as the door started to slide open, "that wasn't so hard." Red was grateful for his ignorance. He might've struck a harder bargain if he'd thought about what was waiting behind the door.

As the door slid all the way open, the relieved smile was quickly wiped off Purple's face, to be replaced by sheer horror. For a brief, terrifying moment, a trembling wall of paper hung suspended in the doorway, before tumbling down on Purple. Red winced. All he could see was one flailing arm underneath the endless paper. Had it really been that long since they'd been in the office?

A muffled scream emanated from under the papers. Red floated over and kicked the top of Purple's gauntlet. "Shut up or I won't dig you out," Red said. "We're trying to do GOVERNMENT things, here. We can't let anyone hear us."

Purple slowly quieted down, and—after a furtive look both ways to ensure the coast was still clear—Red deactivated his hover belt so he could kneel on the ground and scoop the papers back into the room from whence they came. Man, he didn't even recognize some of these languages. Red picked up a paper, then turned a paper-upside down; the language seemed to consist of squares of various sizes. What kind of species wrote like that?? Some sort of race of blockheads?

Heh. Blockheads.

He hoped Purple would recognize it. As Tallest, they had to be able to understand any race under Irken command—so they'd split up the duty of downloading the languages. That left them with about seven hundred each.

A muffled whine drifted up from under the paper pile. "Are you still digging?"

"Yeah, of course I am!" Red threw the paper back in the room and resumed shoving papers until he saw an antenna, then the other, and finally Purple's head was exposed.

Purple looked up at Red plaintively. "Can you pull me out yet?"

Red glanced warily at the mountain of paper on Purple's back. "... Lemme try."

After ten minutes, several strained muscles, and many yelps of pain, Red managed to pull Purple out. The hall was still clear; thank goodness. Otherwise they'd be answering quite a few awkward questions. (Still, though. Some top security, for the Massive of all places.)

"You broke my arm," wailed Purple, cradling the thin limb by which Red had pulled him free, which was definitely not broken.

"Oh, calm down and help me move these," Red muttered. He leaned his shoulder against the pile of paperwork like it was a particularly lumpy piece of furniture and started shoving.

"But my arm!"

"It's not broken. Come on. Do you want to complain about you arm or contribute to the stability and growth of the Irken Empire?"

"I wanna complain about my—"

"What kind of Tallest ARE you?! Huh? You and your arm."

Miffed, Purple stuck his tongue out at Red, but nevertheless started pushing the papers as well. They managed to get the mass of it back inside, and, after scooping up and tossing in the stray paper left outside, they turned their hover belts back on to help them climb over the papers into the room. The door finally slid shut, trapping them inside.

With their paperwork.

Although the reign of Red and Purple was considered by many to be a golden age for the Irken Empire, the truth was conditions for the vast majority of the empire were abysmal. Over half the Irken population suffered in deep poverty. A further twenty-five percent was on the borderline of slipping under, and losing ground. The billions upon billions of non-Irken lifeforms being assimilated into the empire by the day were even worse off. They lived in slave-factories, vast multi-species ghettoes, or devastated worlds with rapidly dwindling populations. It wasn't because the Irkens were inherently cruel—well, they WERE inherently cruel, but that was only a secondary contributing factor. The primary issue was simply that the empire was too massive to be efficiently cared for by a bureaucracy that, like a spider web, eventually converged on a single infinitesimally small point.

Or two points, as the case may be.

And no matter how tall the Tallest were—in comparison with the empire that they were charged to rule, they were indeed very, very small.

Red and Purple gave the paperwork a helpless look, shared the helpless look with each other, and got to work. They were stuck until they finished at least enough to reach the doorpad that would let them open the exit. Best estimate, it would be a labor of at least seven hours. Purple bent down—with pained groans, still sore from being buried under the avalanche earlier—grabbed the first paper with a language he understood, and started reading. Red turned off his belt, took a seat on the papers, and grabbed another.

A request from the Invader on the Planet of Open-Minded Supermodels. He wanted whipped cream. Red pulled a stamp out of his Pak, propped the paper against one thigh, and smacked the stamp down. "REQUEST DENIED – RED". The empire didn't have the resources to fulfill the stupid request of some lazy Invader that would rather spend his time snacking than conquering. He rolled up the paper, wiggled it at Purple, and Purple grabbed it and stuck it in a chute near the ceiling—over the place where they SHOULD have had a shared desk, somewhere, buried—and it was sucked away to be taken care of. Since it was a denial, odds were against the Invader ever finding out his request had been seen, much less rejected. The Massive's messengers had no time for such courtesies.

Red had wasted thirty seconds on a useless request.

"Hey Red," Purple said, studying a paper with a frown. "Do we have any available troops?" A troop was a unit of 81 Irken Soldiers.

"A few. Why?"

"Riots on Parkinglotia. The slaves working in the hotels want to get off-planet and get food."

Well, they didn't have food to spare and they didn't have anywhere off-planet to take the slaves. Irkens knew what famines were like. They'd take care of their own before they took care of aliens. "Ugh, deny it. If the slaves don't have food, the troops that are sent there won't either. Can we... do without the slaves?"

Purple continued frowning at the paper. Then his eyes lit up. "Oh! Oh. Send in a carnivorous species to replace the current slave force. THEY'LL be well-fed."

"Brilliant."

"Thanks!" Purple stamped the paper—"REQUEST DENIED – PURPLE"—scribbled on his additional recommendation, and sent the paper up the chute.

Starvation on Unnamed Irken Colony #13—food request partially denied, after a bit of debate Red and Purple agreed that they could probably get them 30% of their original request. Extreme poverty among all but four extremely fortunate merchants on Morbia—request for financial assistance denied, but accompanied by a direct order to the four merchants to redistribute the entirety of their finances among the five hundred Irkens on planet; if they distributed what they had among all two billion inhabitants, EVERYONE would be broke. The empire had been in perpetual debt for centuries.

"Hey, hey Red." Purple fought back a giggle. "This one's from Zim."

"Oh, really?" Red smiled weakly. "What does HE want?"

"Two tons of snacks, five more MegaDoomers, and four million monies."

The Tallest locked eyes. Then they cracked up. Red leaned back against the paper pile and slid down to the floor as he gasped for breath through his hysterics. Purple only shakily managed to hold the paper up against the wall so he could slam "REQUEST DENIED – PURPLE" on the sheet.

"Wh-what a... what a LOSER!" Purple shoved the paper up the chute. "Is he completely oblivious o-or WHAT?"

"Two tons! Did he really—did he really say two tons?!"

"I'd rather send it to the Parkinglotia slaves than him!"

"Yeah! Hah! Or colony thirteen!" Red's hysterics slowly trailed off. Quietly, he said, "... I wish we COULD send another two tons to colony thirteen."

Purple's laughs immediately cut off. "Yeah. ... Or even Parkinglotia."

"Yeah."

For a moment, they looked morosely at all the paperwork around them. Purple forced himself to pick up another paper, muttering, "I'd make snacks out of ZIM, but they'd weigh less than the packaging needed to ship him to thirteen."

Red forced a laugh. "They'd probably poison whoever tried to eat them, anyway."

"Hah! Yeah."

They said very little else for the rest of the time needed to go through enough paperwork to get to the door, except to occasionally consult with each other on what limited resources to send where. They spent a half hour arguing about a stock of medicine that, quite by accident, they'd both sent to two different planets, and the next two hours not talking to each other.

Every once in a while a second chute over the long-buried desk would drop out a new request for their attention; once, with a scream of frustration, Purple grabbed a wad of papers and shoved them up the chute. The next time a request came through, they all came raining back down on Purple's head.

Purple broke into the pack of fruity chips Red had given him, and then they slowly worked their way through the rest of Red's snacks, and then—holdout that he was—through Purple's stash; and they were still hungry, groggy, bleary-eyed, and in a foul mood as they left the office.

They both tried not to look at the sea of paper they hadn't gotten to.

As they locked the door again and hovered down the hall, Red turned to Purple. "Maybe we should start looking into annexing Sintillia."

"What—and let them burn their crops? Then we get NO sugar, Red."

"No, hear me out—if we're very careful when we send in the Invader, maybe mix them in with a diplomacy mission so they don't suspect anything—"

"Until it's too late and they've been conquered?"

"Yeah! And they’d probably be hesitant to retaliate if they weren’t 100% sure they were being invaded.”

“Yeah... yeah, I get it. I mean, it's not like they WANT to burn their crops, right? That's the only reason we haven't razed them and they know it. Without that..."

They drifted off toward the bridge, conspiring.

Two heads were better than one. Twice as much paperwork stamped, twice as many cries for help ignored. But even so—even so—that was twice as much progress than a singular Tallest could make in a day's work. And at least some cries had been answered, hadn't they? It wasn't like having twice as many Tallest meant the empire suddenly had twice as much food. They did what they could.

Yes—true—the Empire was the strongest it had ever been. It held vast swathes of the galaxy in its iron grip. But no one was more aware than the Almighty Tallest themselves just how brittle that iron was.

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted on [tumblr](http://ckret2.tumblr.com/post/179742811707/request-denied-request-denied).


End file.
